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Simply Amazing: Joe Kittinger and Felix Baumgartner

I often hear people say, ‘never say never’, but I think we can confirm that I will NEVER be standing at the edge of space as Joe Kittinger and Felix Baumgartner have done. If for some crazy reason I ended up in their shoes, I reckon I would either pass out and wee myself or scream the entire way down.

It still makes my heart race to think about what Felix Baumgartner and his magnificent team accomplished on 14 October 2012. On that day Felix became the first human to break the sound barrier without an aircraft, as he captured the eyes and hearts of some eight million people around the world via YouTube, on which the skydive was live-streamed.

We had just woken from a kip as G alerted me on the Twitter that Felix was about to jump. With sleep still in my eyes, I scrambled to get the live-stream up on our MacBook Air and sat mesmerised with tears welling up in my eyes as the tiny dot on my screen that was Felix jumped, struggled to gain control, deploy his parachute and finally reach ground.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch the daredevil skydiver plummet 24 miles in an extraordinary leap over New Mexico below.

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You can also see how Felix Baumgartner’s journey actually began in 1960 with Joe Kittinger and Project Excelsior. It’s amazing to compare footage of both jumps with Felix Baumgartner in all his modern gear and Joe Kittinger with essentailly just an old basket and a pair of goggles as they set skydiving records 52 years apart.

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It’s moments like these that I think it’s okay to be overly sentimental and marvel at how amazing humans can be. We have the power to challenge and inspire each other to strive to reach even higher limits no matter what we do. So let’s not forget that. Bravo again to the entire team!!!